Workforce
UW-Stout students team up with local children to design toys, give city ash trees new life
18 Oct 2023
News
On an early fall morning, 23 children from St. Paul’s School of Menomonie recently walked four blocks to UW-Stout’s Woods Lab in Jarvis Hall Tech Wing, unknowing of what their day would bring.
Lining up single file at the back of the classroom, they quietly peered over university students in a Design for Industry class led by Assistant Professor Kevin Dietsche.
“Everything is designed in this world,” Dietsche said. “Today, you get to work with college students to design toys.”
“Toys!?” the children excitedly echoed back.
Together, the children and university students worked in teams to build rough prototypes of their ideal toys using paper, cardboard, scissors, tape, pipe cleaners, clay, tin foil, Legos, glue, markers, crayons and other supplies, as part of a three-year, cross-disciplinary project that will result in a finished product donated to local children.